The Colombian National Police (CNP) has undergone an extremely dramatic transformation since the late 1980s. Many of the first initiatives that began this transformation have to be credited to both the Pastrana government and an internal movement for professionalization and adaption of a new strategic mindset. The National Police had decided that they must not become the military and must not adopt purely military approaches when developing and implementing plans. The police organization is to focus on criminal behavior and
not on warfare. This encouraged the police to reorganize in a number of different ways that encouraged more civilian interaction and participation. Only the units that were to be organized under the special operations command would focus on paramilitary tactics and strategies. One of the author’s personal experiences with the CNP has proven that, in general, this different mindset is institutionalized into the National Police’s personnel on a whole. Generally, the police do not consider the FARC or any other illegal armed group so much as the enemy but rather as a problem of delinquency. This institutionalized thought promotes plans and tactics that are often far from military equivalents. That is not to say that they do not observe certain military tenets such as security and fire power, but they often look for indirect ways of confronting problems.
In recent years, the capacity of the police has continued to be further developed. According to the Global Security website(2009), the number of CNP personnel numbered around 55,000 in 1989 (National Police, 2009); however, according to Anne W. Patterson’s testimony to the U.S. Senate, CNP numbers increased to 97,000 in 2002, to 134,000 in 2007, and under new plans the number will increase by 20,000 by 2013(Patterson, 2007). The police have also received large amounts of funding for equipment and training through “Plan Colombia.” This assistance has been provided through the national anti-narcotics section (NAS) in the American Embassy as well as a number of justice department and DOD assistance efforts. The increase in force size has also translated into further state presence throughout the country, “We have helped fund the establishment of police units in 158 new municipalities, many of which had not seen any government presence in decades. Today, for the first time in the country’s history, all 1,099 of Colombia’s municipalities, equivalent to county seats, have a permanent government presence, an important step forward for the people of Colombia. To enhance the rule of law, USAID projects have assisted the Government of Colombia in establishing 45 Justice Houses, which provide access to justice and social services for poor Colombians” (Patterson, 2007).
The Colombian government’s efforts to professionalize its police force have also been extensive in that they have sought assistance and cooperation from many other international partners to increase their capacity. The government of Colombia has also sought to discourage corruption inside of the force by providing relatively good salaries to the CNP, and developing internal measures to check for fraud. Of the 100,000 police, 6,500 were removed under suspicion of corruption during the 1990s (Darling, 2000).
The CNP’s increased capacity has provided the country with a level of security that Colombia has not seen for decades. Police have secured most major routes and overland travel has once again become common for ordinary citizens. According to the Colombian government, public opinion polls have had, “a similar rise in public approval for the National Police in the past 10 years. In 1993, 21 percent of Colombians trusted the police. Now this figure has risen to 59.7 percent” (Surprising Colombia, 2009). Overall, violent crime statistics are down dramatically. The CNP has also been seen as particularly competent at developing human intelligence. Many of its high profile police actions to capture paramilitaries, drug traffickers, ELN and FARC guerrillas have been extensively reported on. Some of the most notable operations include participation in the operations such as the freeing of Colombian and American hostages in July 2008, the operation that killed Raul Reyes (Number 2 in the FARC), and the capture of numerous other mid level FARC leaders (Betancourt freed, 2008).
However serious allegations have been leveled against the CNP which diminish the value of much of its progress. The most serious allegations have been directed at the CNP and the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) two separate investigative agencies:
Initial reports suggest that CNP agents have been monitoring email correspondence and telephone calls of opposition leaders, Supreme Court judges, journalists and members of the government…Intelligence officials are accused of selling intercepted information to a range of illegal actors, including drug traffickers, paramilitary groups and left-wing guerrillas. The DAS has been implicated in several scandals under President Alvaro
Uribe's administration, revealing senior intelligence officials' involvement with narcotics traffickers, extra-judicial killings and illicit surveillance. (Wiretapping, 2009)
These accusations have been proven true in many cases. However, both the police and government have taken strong steps to punish the guilty and reform processes that should protect the people of Colombia from further police corruption. The head of CNP was forced to retire and is currently under investigation by the judiciary. This is not to say that the CNP will not continue to be vulnerable to corruption, but all police organization face this challenge and the measure of a strong police organization should be that it can identify this problem and take swift action to correct it. The CNP’s staggering growth rate should be taken into account when evaluating these scandals. The growth has been essential for securing ungoverned spaces in Colombia, but not surprising, the organizational processes have not kept pace with a force that has more than doubled in size. Efforts like Microsoft’s teaming with the CNP to create Web based organizational efficiencies and interaction with the community show promise for the future of the transition of the CNP (“Digital Police”, 2009), along with extensive use of Facebook and YouTube by the CNP.
The growth of the military has also has been similar to that of the CNP. In 2001, the military forces numbered 181,000 and under the Uribe administration have grown to 251,000, with planned growth of an additional 16,000 by 2013(Patterson, 2007). The military has also received large portions of the resources provided under “Plan Colombia,” but more importantly the Colombian government has spent nearly seven billion dollars on the military from 2000–2005 (Patterson, 2007) with an additional four billion dollar upgrade in military hardware planned for the next ten years in an agreement between Colombia, the United States, France, and Israel (Wells, 2009). The Colombian money has been raised by the Uribe administrations’ two separate wealth taxes.
The professionalization and capacity development of the Colombian Military in terms of training and organizational growth has also been impressive.
The assistance training and educational assistance provided under “Plan Colombia” has been instrumental in the professionalization of a military that even critics admit has been substantial. The Colombian public has also recognized this increased professionalization, “While in 1993, public approval of the Armed Forces was 49 percent, but 12 years later it reached 79 percent.” (Suprising Colombia, 2009), and has probably even increased due to last year’s successful operations. The most prominent of these operations were Operation Jaque (hostage rescue of Ingrid Bentoncourt, four Americans, and twelve other Colombians), and the killing or capture of a number of high ranking FARC members. Extortion, homicide, and kidnappings have been greatly reduced to levels that seem to correlate with the military and police growth and their expansion throughout the country.
The development of civil affairs and psychological operations units, along with implementation of community development programs by the military, have demonstrated that at least some elements in the military recognize that counter- insurgency cannot be won through force alone. The military has had a tradition of basing promotions on results and the traditional metric of measurement for the military was the number of enemy killed. The government and military have officially stated that this metric would not be used, but it is one author’s contention, through interaction with the Colombian military, that a prevailing cultural belief persists that still relies on a body count. Evidence of human rights violations due to extrajudicial killings has been presented by Human Rights groups and the U.N., and last year:
The Colombian military recently announced that an internal investigation revealed that several army units were responsible for murdering civilians to inflate the body count of dead guerrillas…Continuing investigations in the Department of Defense and Prosecutor General's office will likely reveal that these deaths were not isolated incidents nor limited to the army. Over 100 claims of civilian deaths at the hands of security forces have emerged in recent weeks from nine areas in Colombia. (Penhaul, 2008)
Development of a new metric for success is crucial if the Colombian military is to avoid a repeat of these damaging actions. It is not sufficient to say that a body count is not a metric of success, because without a clearly defined metric, some members of the military will revert to this simple although inaccurate metric. The new metric should not be used to discourage aggressive military action; rather, to reward actions that result in strengthening public support.
The quantitative and qualitative growth of the security forces in Colombia have clearly enabled much of Colombia’s development and worsened the prospects of success of the country’s illegally armed groups. However, with this growth these government forces have struggled to reform organizationally and culturally to fully utilize their increased capacity. This has often also resulted in human rights violations that have degraded their ability to win the support of the populace and maintain a monopoly on force within Colombia. It is unrealistic to say that the security forces will ever be free from corruption and abuse, but it is important to note that many of these faults have been identified within the Colombian government and security forces. Their actions of identification and correction seem to point to a healthy system that has many of the checks and balances essential to a security apparatus.